Could improving time-to-launch lead to more player retention?

TL;DR: Compared to most games, Eve takes a long time before you can take your first action, even with the Launcher. I think this might push many players who are “Undecided”'s on resubscribing into the “Nay” column.

The following is a big ask, and a hard problem to solve. My thought is - has CCP looked into the following issue to see if it’s beneficial to tackle in the long run?

While I always come back to Eve after taking a break, many players unfortunately do not.

I have a hunch player retention could be improved a bit by looking for ways to decrease the time between double-clicking the Eve launcher icon, and being able to take my first action in station or in-space (if undocked.)

Thinking back upon the times I have left / taken a break from Eve, one thing stands out in my mind as the “Harbringer of Hiatus” as I like to call it:

  • The other games I could play, instead of Eve, could be fired up much more quickly. So I start playing them more and more often, with Eve being played less and less often.

In fact, the quicker I could get into a game, the more likely I was to pick that game to play at any given time. A lot of times, there is a split-second mental conversation I have that goes something like this:
“I kind of want to do this in Eve… but then I could fire up and be at it in about 15 seconds. Eh - Eve later.” And then, 2 weeks go by, I haven’t touched Eve, and I start to wonder “Should I be paying for this subscription when I’m not even playing that much?”

This might be happening with a few others folks?

Most of the games I play I can be taking first-action or first-click within 40 seconds. While I haven’t timed it, I believe Eve is still over the 2-minute mark. (Definitely over 90 seconds.)

I can’t speak for most folks, but I personally would be willing to give up a little CPU or RAM to allow any local caching or start-up performance improvement that isn’t already being done.

Does anyone else ever get affected by this thought process - maybe even a little?

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